Gorilla Theater by Sanderson Christopher Carter;

Author:Sanderson, Christopher Carter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Improvisation Suggestions for Day One and Day Two

On Day One, there is so much to do to develop the scale and depth of exploring in the new mode. The basic gesture work takes on a whole new tone outdoors. I start with the impulse circle, slowly expanding the circle until it is fifty yards across. In a handy field, usually, I like to take the cast through the entire gestural-world building process. It usually goes more quickly, but it also seems infused with new possibilities. As I see these possibilities arise, like faces in the clouds, I work to give the group forms that will encourage the exploration of these possibilities. An early improvisation was a pantomime war between the Amazons and their queen and Theseus and his warriors for A Midsummer Night's Dream. The real juice began to flow when we added supernatural warrior powers to the game and created alternative endings. After improvising that Hippolyta wins and takes Theseus prisoner, and many other alternatives, the actress playing the Amazon queen had a new fire in her eyes as the captive of the court scene that opens the play. She had given herself as a sacrifice to save he r people, as it turned ou t in th e improvisation, and was no mere war trophy. This set up a whole new arc for the love between Hippolyta and Theseus to grow out of admiration for good judgment and a shared knowledge of political power and its intricacies. The fairies in that play improvised physical work in and around the trees. And the Claudius family in Hamlet had an improvised picnic at one point in that paratheatric rehearsal. Day One leads in to the night's bonfire work, which I will describe in the next section.

On Day Two, the warm-up and crescendo to the paratheatric run is the key, the cornerstone, the apex. This is a time for adding some structural bones to the flesh and blood developed the day and night before. The sculpture of the morning is to be shaped more closely to improvising the actual events of the play, but in a nonlinear way. A circular truth, moving back over covered ground to spiral into the nightmares, dreams, fears, hopes, and desires that fuel the action of the play. If the performance is the metaphorical canvas to be painted every night, and the first day and night are the primitive grinding of the new pigment powders to make the paint, then the second day is the time to invoke the gallons and gallons of paint that will be poured and washed and brushed over the canvas to make the vivid, rich gorilla-theatre style what it is.

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